


A Very British Battle

by GryffindorTom



Category: BBC Shipping Forecast, Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-03
Updated: 2016-12-03
Packaged: 2018-09-06 03:23:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,461
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8732866
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GryffindorTom/pseuds/GryffindorTom
Summary: A look at what the Battle of Hogwarts would have been like had JK Rowling written it using several British stereotypes…





	

**Great Hall, Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Scotland**

**2nd May 1998**

The enchanted ceiling of the Great Hall was dark and scattered with stars, and below it the four long House tables were lined with dishevelled students, some in traveling cloaks, others in dressing gowns.

Many of the students looked petriﬁed. However, as Harry skirted the walls, scanning the Gryfﬁndor table for Ron and Hermione, Ernie Macmillan stood up at the Hufﬂepuff table and changed the radio on the staff table to Radio 4.

"I don't want to miss the Shipping Forecast you know!" he said, taking a bite of his sausage.

"If you are of age, you may stay," said Professor McGonagall, sighing.

"What about our things?" called a girl at the Ravenclaw table. "Our crumpets, our breakfast tea?"

"We have no time." Professor McGonagall said, frowning. "The important thing is to get you out of here in time." But her ﬁnal words were drowned as a different voice echoed throughout the Hall. It was high, cold, and clean. There was no telling from where it came; it seemed to issue from the walls themselves. Like the monster it had once commanded, it might have lain dormant there for centuries.

"The shipping forecast issued by the Met Office, on behalf of the Maritime and Coastguard Agency, at 0515 UTC on 2nd May 1998 for the period 0000 UTC 2nd May 1998 to 0000 UTC 3rd May 1998." The voice said, scaring the First and Second Years. There were screams amongst the students, some of whom clutched each other, looking around in terror for the source of the sound. Eventually the broadcast concluded, the silence swallowing everyone. Every head turned, every eye in the place seemed to have found Ernie, to hold him frozen in the glare of thousands of invisible beams.

Then a ﬁgure rose from the Slytherin table and he recognized Pansy Parkinson as she raised a shaking arm and screamed, "But he's there! McMillian is there! Someone grab him!"

Before Harry could speak, there was a massive movement. The Hufﬂepuffs in front of him had risen and stood facing, not Ernie, but the Slytherins. Then the Gryffindors stood, and almost at the same moment, the Ravenclaws, all of them, with their backs to Ernie, all of them looking toward Pansy instead, and Ernie, awe-struck and overwhelmed, saw wands emerging everywhere, pulled from beneath cloaks and under sleeves.

"Thank you, Miss Parkinson," said Professor McGonagall in a clipped voice. "You will leave the Hall ﬁrst with Mr Filch."

Harry heard the grinding of benches and then the sound of the Slytherins trooping out on the other side of the Hall. Kingsley had stepped forward on the raised platform to address those who had remained behind.

"We've only got half an hour until The Archers, so we need to act fast!" the dark skinned man said. "A battle plan has been agreed between the teachers of Hogwarts and the Order of the Phoenix. Professors Flitwick, Sprout, and McGonagall are going to take groups up to the three highest towers—Ravenclaw, Astronomy, and Gryfﬁndor—where they'll have a good overview."

"Sounds like a job for us," called Fred, indicating himself and George, and Kingsley nodded his approval.

Harry sensed eyes following him as he ran out of the Great Hall into the entrance hall still crowded with evacuating students. He allowed himself to be swept up the marble staircase with them, but at the top he hurried off along a deserted corridor, Hermione following him.

"Good luck my love." Hermione said, snogging the life out of the messy haired teen.

"Thanks babe." Harry said, groping Hermione's rear. He pulled the Marauder's Map out of the pouch around his neck, intent on seeing if anyone was going to be nearby. Undoing his shirt, he was glad that he got to have some time where he could pleasure the bushy haired girl.

He put the map away, caressing her breasts, noting her kisses were over his face, and closed his eyes, trying to concentrate.

Beneath his ﬁngers, Harry's eyes ﬂew open again. He leapt up from the plinth, pushing Hermione off him and tore back the way he had come, now in pursuit of his one last hope. Harry saw Zacharias Smith bowling over ﬁrst years to get to the front of the queue; here and there younger students were tutting at him, annoyed at how he had jumped the queue!

Harry caught sight of a red haired figure, drifting across the entrance hall below and yelled as loudly as he could over the clamour.

"SUSAN, SUSAN!" He shouted, noting the cute Hufflepuff was looking at him. "I love you!" The two of them went to a broom closet, intent on losing their virginities to each other.

-A Very British Battle…-

A while later, the fight between the light and the dark made a push, especially as the dark moved the battle into the castle itself.

Tom Riddle, who conﬁded in no one and operated alone, might have been arrogant enough to assume that he, and only he, had penetrated the deepest mysteries of Hogwarts Castle. Of course, Dumbledore and Flitwick, those model pupils, had never set foot in that particular place, but he, Harry, had strayed off the beaten track in his time at school—here at last was a secret he and Voldemort knew, that Dumbledore had never discovered—

Harry and Susan were surprised upon leaving the broom closet by Professor Sprout, who was thundering past followed by Neville Longbottom and half a dozen other students, all of them wearing earmuffs and carrying what appeared to be large potted plants.

"Mandrakes!" Neville bellowed at Harry over his shoulder as he ran. "Going to lob them over the walls—they won't like this!"

Harry hurtled around a corner and found Fred and a small knot of students, including Lee Jordan who was snogging Hannah Abbott, leaning beside another empty plinth, whose statue had concealed a secret passageway. Their wands were drawn and they were listening at the concealed hole. "Nice night for it!" Fred shouted as the castle quaked again, and Harry sprinted by, elated and terriﬁed in equal measure. Suddenly the Archers theme tune came on and everyone donned earmuffs.

"NOOOOOOOOOOO! Not the Archers!" Voldemort shouted from the courtyard. Harry ran down where he suddenly got hit by a Killing Curse from the Dark Lord.

**Limbo**

**Date Unknown**

Harry lay face down, listening to the silence. He was perfectly alone. Nobody was watching. Nobody else was there. He was not perfectly sure that he was there himself.

A long time later, or may be no time at all, it came to him that he must exist, must be more than disembodied thought, because he was lying, deﬁnitely lying, on some surface. Therefore, Harry knew that had a sense of touch, and the thing against which he lay existed too.

Almost as soon as he had reached this conclusion, Harry became conscious that he was naked. Convinced as he was of his total solitude, this did not concern him, but it did intrigue him slightly. He wondered whether, as he could feel, he would be able to see. In opening them, he discovered that he had eyes.

He lay in a bright mist, through it was not like mist he had ever experienced before. His surroundings were not hidden by cloudy vapour; rather the cloudy vapour had not yet formed into surroundings. The ﬂoor on which he lay seemed to be white, neither warm nor cold, but simply there, a ﬂat, blank something on which to be.

He sat up. His body appeared unscathed. He touched his face. He was not wearing glasses anymore.

Suddenly his sight went black again, the scene changing.

**Great Hall, Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Scotland**

**2nd May 1998**

He was lying face down on the ground again. The smell of the Great Hall ﬁlled his nostrils. He could feel the cold hard ground beneath his cheek, and the hinge of his glasses, which had been knocked sideways by the fall, cutting into his temple. Every inch of him ached, and the place where the Killing Curse had hit him felt like the bruise of an iron-clad punch. He did not stir but remained exactly where he had fallen, with his left arm bent out at an awkward angle and his mouth gaping.

He had expected to hear cheers of triumph and jubilation at his death, but instead hurried footsteps, whispers, and solicitous murmurs ﬁlled the air.

"My Lord ...my Lord ..." It was Bellatrix's voice, and she spoke as if to a lover.

Harry did not dare open his eyes, but allowed his other senses to explore his predicament. He knew that his wand was still stowed beneath his robes because he could feel it pressed between his chest and the ground. A slight cushioning effect in the area of his stomach told him that the Invisibility Cloak was also there, stuffed out of sight.

Footsteps, several people were backing away from the same spot. Desperate to see what he could hear and why, Harry opened his eyes by a millimetre.

A feast was happening, tables formed full of teapots and cucumber sandwiches. Everyone eating together, both Death Eaters, the Order of the Phoenix and Dumbledore's Army amongst others. Harry got up and sat next to Hermione and Susan when suddenly his table got knocked over, the cucumber sandwiches and cup of tea flying to the rubble.

"Avada Kedavra."

As Voldemort cast the killing curse at the Boy-Who-Lived, Harry regretted not finishing his cup of tea and cucumber sandwiches which laid on the floor with the rubble. As he dove out of the way, the curse hitting Lucius Malfoy, Harry saw Bellatrix Lestrange fighting Molly Weasley, who was defending her afternoon tea.

"Not my scones you bitch!" Molly shouted. Bellatrix spun on the spot, roaring with laughter.

Hundreds of people now lined the walls, watching the two ﬁghts, the first between Voldemort and Harry with the second one being between Bellatrix and Molly. Bellatrix was as mad as her master, capering as Molly's curses danced around her.

"You—will—never—touch—my—scones—again!" screamed Mrs Weasley.

Bellatrix laughed, the same exhilarated laugh her cousin Sirius had given as he toppled backward through the veil, and suddenly Harry knew what was going to happen before it did.

Molly's curse soared beneath Bellatrix's outstretched arm and hit her squarely in the chest, directly over her heart. Bellatrix's gloating smile froze, her eyes began to bulge: For the tiniest space of time she knew what had happened, and then she toppled, and the watching crowd roared, and Voldemort screamed

"I don't want anyone else to try to help." Harry said loudly, and in the total silence his voice carried like a trumpet call. "It's got to be like this. It's got to be me."

Voldemort hissed. "Potter doesn't mean that," he said, his red eyes wide. "That isn't how he works, is it? Who are you going to use as a shield today, Potter?"

"YOU DAMAGED MY CUCUMBER SANDWICHES!" Harry shouted. Voldemort's chest rose and fell rapidly, and Harry could feel the curse coming, feel it building inside the wand pointed at his face. "But what does it matter?" he said softly. "Even if you are right, Tom, it makes no difference to you and me."

Harry twitched the hawthorn wand he had captured, and he felt the eyes of everyone in the Hall upon it.

A red-gold glow burst suddenly across the enchanted sky above them as an edge of dazzling sun appeared over the sill of the nearest window. The light hit both of their faces at the same time, so that Voldemort's was suddenly a ﬂaming blur. Harry heard the high voice shriek as he too yelled his best hope to the heavens.

"Avada Kedavra!"

"Expelliarmus!"

The bang was like a cannon blast, and the golden ﬂames that erupted between them, at the dead centre of the circle they had been treading, marked the point where the spells collided. Harry saw Voldemort's green jet meet his own spell, saw the Elder Wand ﬂy high, dark against the sunrise, spinning across the enchanted ceiling like the head of Nagini, spinning through the air toward the master it would not kill, who had come to take full possession of it at last. And Harry, with the unerring skill of a Seeker, caught the wand in his free hand as Voldemort fell backward, arms splayed, the slit pupils of the scarlet eyes rolling upward. Tom Riddle hit the ﬂoor with a mundane ﬁnality, his body feeble and shrunken, the white hands empty, the snakelike face vacant and unknowing. Voldemort was dead, killed by his own rebounding curse, and Harry stood with two wands in his hands, staring down at his enemy's shell.

One second of silence, the shock of the moment suspended around them, and then the silence broke around Harry as the screams and the cheers and the roars of the watchers rent the air.

The ﬁerce new sun dazzled the windows as they thundered toward him, and the ﬁrst to reach him were Susan and Hermione, and it was their arms that were wrapped around him, their incomprehensible shouts that deafened him

After a while, exhausted and drained, Harry found himself sitting on a bench beside Luna.

"I'd want some peace and quiet, if it were me," she said. "Just you, Hermione and Susan."

"I'd love it," he replied.

"I'll distract them all," she said. "Use your Cloak." Before he could say a word, Luna cried, "Oooh, look, a Blibbering Humdinger!" and pointed out of the window. Everyone who heard looked around, and Harry slid the Cloak up over himself, and got to his feet.

Now he could move through the Hall without interference. He saw Neville, the sword of Gryfﬁndor lying beside his plate containing his Afternoon Tea as he ate, surrounded by a knot of fervent admirers.

Somewhere in the distance they could hear Peeves zooming through the corridors singing a victory song of his own composition

"We did it, we bashed them, wee Potter's the one, And Voldy's gone moldy, so now let's have fun!"

As Harry was thinking now only of laying with Hermione and Susan in his four poster bed that was waiting for him in Gryfﬁndor Tower, he wondered whether Kreacher might bring him a sandwich or some scones there, along with a fresh cup of tea. "I've had enough trouble for a lifetime."

Years later a happily married Harry would move his hand absentmindedly, touching the lightning scar on his forehead. The scar would not have pained Harry for nineteen years, especially as, for Harry, all was well.


End file.
